Friday, March 13, 2009

What Ads Have Theists Run on Buses?

The claim has been made that the current Atheist Bus ads are being run in response to ads containing "Christian doomsday preaching that suggested that you would go to hell if you didn't believe in God particularly their belief system." I have not heard the people behind the Atheist Bus ad campaign making such a claim; instead they said they wanted "to bring awareness to the general public about atheism, humanism.... we hope to spark conversations between believers and non-believers." I think that's cool and I welcome the respect and conversation, so I wanted to respond to the more "inflammatory" claim. Personally, I would not approve of damning ads, though as previously mentioned, I did like the Die Hard 4 parody ad (see previous post).

When Global's Darryl Konynenbelt interviewed a representative from the British Humanist Association which originally designed the Atheist Bus ads, she said that their ads were in response to some Christian ads that ran on UK buses with a link to www.jesussaid.org (see previous post for the video). Then she commented that these ads "clearly said that anyone not following Jesus would be condemned to eternal damnation and hellfire." These ads were Bible verses about Jesus which so far as I could see never condemned anyone to hell, but did at times present an exclusive message: Jesus is THE Way, for example. Here's my quick mock-up of the bus ad shown on a UK bus in the documentary:

It was said of JESUS: Behold the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world. John 1: 29

I liked this one from the UK bus ads:

JESUS said: When the Son of Man comes, will He find Faith on the Earth? Luke 18: 8

Anyhow, what about ads in Canada? The atheistbus.ca website gave a link to a blog with links to some Ottawa bus ads that Christians have run. I remember some of these also running on the TTC, in particular the "busstopbiblestudies" ones which always included the name of a local church with service times. See what you think....